A faint galaxy redshift survey to B=24

Using the multislit LDSS-2 spectrograph on the William Herschel Telescope we have completed a redshift survey in the magnitude range 22.5 < B < 24 which has produced 73 redshifts representing a 73% complete sample uniformly-selected from four deep fields at high Galactic latitude. The survey extends out to z > 1 and includes the highest redshift galaxy (z = 1.108) yet discovered in a field sample. The median redshift, zmed = 0.46, and form of the redshift distribution constitute compelling evidence against simple luminosity evolution as an explanation of the large excess of faint galaxies (similar or equal to x 2-4 no-evolution) seen in this magnitude range. Rather we identify the excess population as blue objects with z ~ 0.4 and B, luminosities similar to local L* galaxies indicating a dramatic decrease in the density of such objects over the last Hubble time, confirming the trends found in brighter redshift surveys. We also find a marked absence of very low redshift galaxies (z < 0.1) at faint limits, severely constraining any significant steepening of the local field galaxy luminosity function at low luminosities.